Chris Beesley addresses a talking point from Everton's 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest
Less than 24 hours had passed since the final whistle blew on Everton’s 1-0 win at Manchester United as David Moyes’ men became the first visiting side to triumph in a Premier League game at Old Trafford and this correspondent was met by a poser of a question in front of an assembled audience in a public arena.
The setting was Waterstones at Liverpool One, where, joined by former Blues player and ECHO columnist Michael Ball; my friend and former ECHO colleague Sam Carroll, who was acting as master of ceremonies; and fellow Everton author with Pitch Publishing, Steve Zocek, we were holding a live event to coincide with the launch of my first book, Spirit of the Blues: Everton’s Most Memorable Matches & Goodison Park’s Greatest Games. We had opened up the floor for a Q&A session and right off the bat as was asked: “What do you think the real reason was for Harry Catterick selling Alan Ball to Arsenal?”
It wasn’t exactly the soft, easy question to start you off with like you often get on television game shows to settle you in. I did my best to be diplomatic and said something having bought Ball for a record fee, Catterick was then able to sell him on for a record fee, with the then Everton manager reckoning that he’d already had the best years of the World Cup winner’s career and that perhaps he felt that the tempestuous Lancastrian’s powers were by this point on the wane.
Over half a century on, why was this still a hot potato though? We’re talking about a transfer that occurred almost on December 22, 1971, the year of decimalisation of UK currency.
Ball was leaving Goodison Park for Highbury in a £220,000 deal at a time when your average pint cost 16 pence. I can no longer consider myself a young man, but it was still several years before I was born, never mind attending football matches.
Perhaps it remains such a burning issue in some older Evertonians’ minds because almost 54 years on, the Blues have still not replaced Ball? At a time when Everton were known as ‘The Mersey Millionaires’ because of benefactor John Moores’ fortune from his Littlewoods business empire, Catterick swooped for Ball following his side’s lacklustre display in their 1-0 defeat to Liverpool in the 1966 Charity Shield at Goodison Park, the day of Merseyside’s greatest ever display of football trophies as Reds captain Ron Yeats and Blues skipper Brian Labone paraded around the pitch with the League Championship and FA Cup respectively behind Roger Hunt and Ray Wilson carrying the World Cup.
Despite Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick, it was 21-year-old Ball, the youngest member of Alf Ramsey’s side, who was widely regarded as being man-of-the-match when England defeated West Germany 4-2 to lift the Jules Rimet Trophy at Wembley and the display convinced the Everton manager to shell out £112,000 for his services to prise him from Blackpool. Neville Southall would come to be regarded as the world’s best goalkeeper during the peak of his powers at Goodison Park, but when it comes to outfield players, Ball is arguably the most-talented to have pulled on the royal blue jersey in the post-Second World War era.
Colin Harvey, the last surviving member of ‘The Holy Trinity’, the most-revered midfield in Blues history, alongside Howard Kendall, certainly believes so and who are the rest of us to argue with the Everton legend who in turn described a teenage Wayne Rooney as like Kenny Dalglish but quicker.
Look at Ball’s goal returns from midfield in his first four seasons at Goodison Park. They read 18, 20, 18, 12 – David Moyes would crave that from his strikers these days.
Okay, he tails off with nine in 1970/71 and was on three for the season when Catterick sold him but tallies of 14, 13 and 10 from his first three full campaigns with the Gunners suggest Ball was no busted flush and his final First Division appearance in a second spell with Southampton did not come until October 1982 when he was 37 years old.
Alan Ball was across the Goodison Park pitch with his boots after being sold by Everton to Arsenal in December 1971
Alan Ball was across the Goodison Park pitch with his boots after being sold by Everton to Arsenal in December 1971
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Everton have had great central midfielders since Ball. Peter Reid, who won PFA Player of the Year and was hailed by Kendall as being the club’s most important signing since the war, forged a formidable partnership with Paul Bracewell in the club’s most successful season of 1984/85, but the pair of them only contributed four goals apiece. Before them, Martin Dobson bagged 11 goals in 1976/77, a tally that was matched by Gary Speed in 1996/97, but more recent prolific 21st century midfield marksmen such as Tim Cahill and Marouane Fellaini tend to have been deployed in more advanced roles, playing off the striker.
That’s where Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has been for most of his first season on Merseyside, but perhaps Idrissa Gueye’s slap on Michael Keane has actually proven to be the jolt that Moyes needed to unleash his £25million signing from Chelsea’s powers from deep?
After moving back alongside James Garner at Old Trafford, the 27-year-old netted the match-winner in spectacular fashion. Having struck against Newcastle United in the next game, he pulled the strings from that role again in Everton’s first-ever Premier League victory at Bournemouth.
Against his own home city club Nottingham Forest, Dewsbury-Hall was running the show once more, and if he’d been playing back in Ball’s day, he’d have probably been awarded the Blues’ first goal as well as just the third. Although he wears the number 22 jersey, after the success at the Vitality Stadium, Dewsbury-Hall told the ECHO: “My most natural position is a box-to-box number eight. I’ll play anywhere the manager wants me, but most of my career I’ve played as a number eight, so I feel comfortable there. “I can defend, I can drive forward with the ball, I can attack, I like running. I can do pretty much anything you need me to do, so I feel comfortable there.”
Everton with a central midfielder who can do all that. It’s been a long time coming.
Just like a Premier League win at Stamford Bridge where the Blues head next, having not picked up three points there for 31 years. Having ended their Manchester United and Bournemouth hoodoos, Dewsbury-Hall will be determined to help his new side get another monkey off their backs against the club that sold him in August.